The Seima Protection Forest (SPF) covers 292,690 ha. It is located in eastern Cambodia, mainly in Mondulkiri Province with a small area extending into Kratie Province. The REDD project area covers 180,513 ha of forest in the SPF Core Protection Area. The SPF was created by a Prime Ministerial Sub decree in late 2009. This upgraded the conservation status of the former Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, which operated during 2002-2009. The site is part of the ancestral homeland of large number of ethnic Bunong people, for whom the forest is a key source of income and central to their spiritual beliefs. The area is also a meeting place for two important ecoregions – the Annamite Mountains (notable for high levels of local endemism among evergreen forest species) and the lower Mekong dry forests (which are crucial for the survival of many species typical of lowland deciduous forests). There are 41 Globally Threatened vertebrate species recorded in the project area (including 4 Critically Endangered and 14 Endangered). Many of these occur in globally or regionally outstanding populations, including Asian Elephants, primates, wild cattle, several carnivores and birds such as the Giant Ibis and Green Peafowl.

63 year-old illegal wildlife trader, George Bush, was sentenced to 14 months in prison (suspended for two years) for offering to sell two leopard cat skulls, 134 monkey parts including hands and heads, and a skeleton of an infant crab-eating macaque, according to London Metropolitan Police Service's Wildlife Crime Unit.

Baby Orangutan Gito Is Up For Adoption

International Animal Rescue | 25th November 2015

Baby orangutan Gito was left to die in a cardboard box in Borneo, and our latest video shows that he has been transformed beyond recognition by the treatment and care from our team in Indonesia. Gito was filmed at our Rehabilitation Centre in Ketapang, West Borneo. Our vets and carers work round the clock to save the lives of orphaned orangutans like Gito that are victims of deforestation and the recent fires devastating the forests.

Now, less than two months after his rescue, Gito is looking healthy, happy and alert – and even sporting two fine front teeth! He may not yet be as hairy as he should be, but his skin is smooth and supple and there are definite signs that his coat is growing.

In recognition of Gito’s improved state of health, and as a thank you for all the support we have received so far, we have added Gito to our list of orangutans available for virtual adoption. All of our adoptions come with an 'adoption pack'. The pack is a small thank you for your support. It also serves as a proud reminder of the animal you are helping to care for, with a photo for display, a fact sheet and exclusive updates on your chosen animal's progress.

First-Ever Conviction For Orangutan Trafficking In Aceh

Philip Jacobson | Mongabay | November 23, 2015

A wildlife trafficker who was caught trying to sell three baby orangutans on Facebook was sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined 50 million rupiah ($3,653) in Indonesia’s Aceh province last week.

The man, a 29-year-old university student named Rahmadani, was arrested in a sting on August 1. Besides the Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), authorities found him with two red-backed sea eagles (Haliastur indus); a great argus (Argusianus argus), which is a type of pheasant; and a taxidermied Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi).

“Hopefully the conviction serves as a deterrent for would-be perpetrators of environmental crimes, including traffickers of protected plants and animals,” said Genman Hasibuan, head of the Aceh branch of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), which assisted in the sting.

“This verdict is the first such conviction in Aceh,” said Panut Hadisiswoyo, director of the Orangutan Information Center, which also helped track the man. “It is an important milestone for law enforcement efforts in regard to environmental crimes in Aceh.”

One of the baby orangutans that was confiscated from a trafficker in Aceh in August. Photo by Junaidi Hanafiah

However, Panut said the man should have received a stronger sentence. The maximum penalty for wildlife trafficking under the 1990 Conservation Law is five years imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah fine.

He noted that in neighboring North Sumatra province in July, a man who was caught trying to sell just one baby orangutan was sentenced to two years behind bars and a 10 million rupiah fine.

“That proves that wildlife trafficking cases are not being taken seriously by the courts, even though these creatures represent priceless natural assets for Indonesia,” he said.

Aceh is a major source for trafficked Sumatran orangutans, a critically endangered species of which about 6,000 remain in the wild.

These baby orangutans were confiscated from a trafficker in Aceh in August. Photo by Junaidi HanafiahRahmadani (red shirt), who was convicted last week of trafficking protected wildlife, is shown with law enforcement officials after his arrest in August. Photo by Junaidi Hanafiah

Heartbreaking photos of a neglected baby orangutan kept as a pet in Indonesia don’t depict an isolated incident of animal mistreatment, but reflect the horrific toll of the palm oil industry, according to an international animal rescue group.

The young orangutan, later named "Gito" by rescue workers, was previously kept as a pet by Pak Ajung, the head of a village in Ketapang’s Simpang Hulu district on the island of Borneo, Lis Key, spokeswoman for UK-based nonprofit International Animal Rescue, told The Huffington Post. A local group, the Centure for Orangutan Protection, contacted IAR a few weeks ago with concern over the animal’s welfare.

“The condition of Gito on our team’s arrival was shocking even for them, who have seen hundreds of captive orangutans,” Key said. “Gito looked as what can only be described as a mummified baby orangutan with a severe skin condition.”

INTERNATIONAL ANIMAL RESCUE

Gito was suffering from a severe case of mange when rescue workers found him.

In addition to the skin condition — which turned out to be a serious case of mange — the orangutan was also suffering from severe dehydration, malnutrition and diarrhea caused by a lack of proper care.

“Gito was being kept in an instant noodle cardboard box, wet from his own urine, and given only sweetened condensed milk from a can,” Key said. While a press release described Gito as having been "left out in a backyard in the sun to die". Key said Ajung appeared to be more overwhelmed than intentionally cruel.

“The man was keeping him as a pet but when he became sick … he dumped him in the box. … I suspect that he simply found the problem of having a sick baby orangutan on his hands too difficult to deal with,” she explained. Ajung, she said, was happy to turn the animal over.

Gito now resides at the IAR’s orangutan rehabilitation centre in Ketapang, West Borneo. He’ll stay in the organization’s care for several years, socializing with other orangutans and learning skills he’ll need to survive in the wild. If he’s successful, Key said, he’ll ultimately be released into a protected forest.

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International Animal Rescue

Gito, a three to four month old orangutan was found severely malnourished in a cardboard box in Hamlet Giet, Merawa Village, in Simpang Hulu District of Borneo. Gito is now being rehabilitated by IAR at their office, which is approximately 170km away in West Borneo.

Keeping orangutans as pets is illegal in Indonesia, and hard stats about the black market trade are hard to come by, but the practice is “widespread” in many parts of the country, according to non profit group Orang Utan Republik Education Initiative. Wealthy families often keep pet orangutans as status symbols, Richard Zimmerman, executive director of Orangutan Outreach, told Scientific American earlier this year.

The illegal pet trade is fueled by rampant habitat destruction -- primarily caused by the palm oil industry -- on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. The two Indonesian islands are the only places left where the endangered creatures still live in the wild.

“The ‘trade’ in orangutans as pets is a symptom of the wider problem of the destruction of the species’ habitat, largely for palm oil plantations and other agro industries,” Key said. “Orangutans and other wildlife are left without food and shelter and are forced out into the open where they come into conflict with humans. Often the adults are killed, either by plantation workers who regard them as pests, or by people who eat them as bushmeat.”

Sometimes, people will capture the babies "opportunistically" when they happen to have killed a mother -- as opposed to intentionally seeking out a baby with the mother -- and either keep the baby or sell it for profit. But others will intentionally target mothers in order to sell the young on the black market, according to the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.

The babies are typically ripped away from the bodies of their dead mothers, and the stress of capture, transportation and subsequent captivity is so great that most infants don't survive long. Even if they do, the end result is inevitably tragic. Some owners don't know how to care for the animals, as evidenced by Gito and another orangutan, Budi, that the IAR rescued earlier this year. And if the apes make it to adulthood, keeping the large, strong animals around the home becomes dangerous, and owners end up having to keep them inhumanely confined to cages.

But Key believes the deforestation and the practices of the palm oil industry, not individuals like Pak Ajung, are truly to blame for the plight of orangutans kept as pets.

“The main culprits are certainly not the local people who take in baby orangutans,” she said. “The real culprits are the companies decimating the forest for commercial gain, without a care for the natural environment or the animals and people who depend on it to survive.”

Ape Alliance member Wild Futures primate conservation and welfare charity recently expressed their delight and gratitude when Cross Country Trains pulled an ad in response to objections by the charity and their supporters.

Cross Country’s recent promotion for NUS students featured a chimpanzee and suggested on ‘Step Number 4’ that students ‘Buy a Monkey’ with the saved money. Wild Futures contacted Cross Country Trains asking them to drop their advert, explaining that it was irresponsible to feature a chimpanzee dressed in clothing and potentially very damaging to encourage people to buy a pet monkey.

Celebrities, campaigns and brands, such as Cross Country Trains, are designed to directly influence their target audience. Dressing primates up for entertainment purposes reinforces and promotes the idea that primates can live happily alongside humans, which sets back the work of organisation such as Wild Futures who have been trying to change this practice for years. Wild Futures operates a sanctuary for rescued ex-pet monkeys in Cornwall and has first-hand experience of the suffering caused by the trade in primates as pets. The centre rescues and rehabilitates monkeys in need, allowing them to socialise with their own kind in a safe home for life. Wild Futures campaigns to see an end to the primate pet trade in the UK and abroad.

The charity have said that they welcome Cross Country’s decision and are encouraging the advert agency to sign the Animal Pledge at www.AnimalPledge.org

Her name is Wounda, but her name says it all. In the Congo it means 'close to dying' - and that is exactly how she was found when she was taken in by the Jane Goodall Institute's Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center in the Republic of Congo.

And when she was finally released after being nursed back to health, she repaid the kindness by hugging the well-known animal activist as realised she was free again.

In the time since Wounda was found, it has taken years of care and dedication to nurse her back to health, until finally she was strong enough to be released into the outdoors once again.

This year has been a positive one for U.S. primates. In June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serviceproposed a rule that would extend protection to captive chimps by classifying them, like their wild counterparts, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Then this fall, nine lucky baboons, age 13 to 23, were finally removed from their lab cages and sent to Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary, where they’re living out the rest of their days in peace, freedom and comfort.

Now, we can celebrate another great victory for U.S. primates. Just last week, President Obama signed the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act into law, which facilitates the transfer of nearly all research chimps to sanctuaries.

The bipartisan-supported amendment to the Public Health Service Act frees up spending restrictions on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for chimp retirement care. According to the National Journal, a 2000 law placed a $30 million spending cap on the NIH for the care of retired research chimps living in reserve sanctuaries – a cap that reached its limit this November.

50 chimps will remain with the NIH but 310 others will be retired to sanctuaries around the U.S. over the next five years. Federal funding will be given to these sanctuaries to help them expand and care for their new chimp residents. The funding will cost about half as much as it did when the chimps were housed in NIH facilities.

NIH Director Francis S. Collins told Aljazeera America that “new scientific methods and technologies have rendered [chimp] use in research largely unnecessary.” A 2011 study by the Institute of Medicine backs up this statement, noting a similar conclusion about the “decreasing scientific need for chimpanzee studies.”

The new act provides a reason to celebrate and to hope that we might soon see the end of all chimp research in the U.S.

Yesterday we heard that Guinée- Application de la Loi Faunique (GALF), after an intense eight month operation and in conjunction with NCB Interpol, managed to apprehend Ousmane Diallo a wildlife trafficker who was convicted (in his absence) in a landmark case in July after confessing to having trafficked "more than 500 chimpanzees" since 1994 (BFF news archive - 31st July 2013).

The raid on a residential building in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, took place in the early hours of Monday morning (25th August 2013), under the cover of darkness. The officers and investigators involved were in considerable danger during the operation and one GALF investigator has since been "robbed and attacked by criminals equipped with guns and machetes", luckily sustaining no serious injuries. Following his arrest Ousmane was immediately transferred to the central prison where he will serve his 1 year sentence (the maximum sentence for wildlife crimes under Guinean law).

We would like to commend, once again, the work of GALF and the entire EAGLE network (Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement), as well as NCB Interpol under the guidance of police commissioner Niouma Koivogui who worked tirelessly to bring what Ofir Driori, LAGA founder, describes as possibly "the biggest ape trafficker ever prosecuted in Africa" to justice.